Someone once said – one of her personal goals is to live a healthier lifestyle. And it shall start with running marathons.
And so she started the ball rolling by claiming her first 10km medal at the Standard Chartered Marathon last year. Though it was only 10km, it was no deem fit for someone who doesn’t run. Claiming a timing of 1hr 34mins for a 10km walk (averaging a 9min 24s), it’s quite a record for a first timer ya? š
This year, she decided to take on the challenge of Yellow Ribbon Prison Run. Knowing the route consists of lots of slopes, she took on the 6km challenge and managed to complete in 52mins! Quite an improvement I’d say, considering slopes kept appearing š Ok actually she didn’t walk.. she ran for the first 1.5km non-stop, which was a first! Achievement unlocked!
Update: the official timing for Yellow Ribbon run is 0:50:53 š
Recently, a friend of mine wrote a very nice piece of article on her tips and tricks on slimming down after pregnancy. Before her first kid, she had a good figure. After giving birth to her 3rd child, she still looks equally awesome! So I thought it’d be good if I can share it here, and maybe serve as a good advice to friends who are giving birth soon.
For those who asked me what is my secret to slimming down so fast after delivery; there is no secret really but just sharing what works for me during pregnancy and confinement.
================================
1) Although I ate whatever I wanted during pregnancy, I monitored my weight gain during this period. There are guides online on how much you should be putting on based on your pre-pregnancy BMI. Pregnancy is not an excuse to ālet goā and overeat. The more weight you gain, the harder it is to lose it later on. Hence donāt go piling on too much!
2) I watched what I ate during confinement. I didnāt overeat and I ate healthily with less carbo; think soups, fish and veges. The only fruit I had was apple and the only drink was the red dates drink. For the whole month, there were NO SUCH THING as cheat days or little treats. Even when your husband is downing that ice cold gassy coke right in front of your eyes, you just have to tahan and settle for your red dates drink.
3) Post natal massage and binding helps. Post natal massage is SUPPOSED to be painful; it is NOT the relaxing massage that you have had at spas. No pain, no gain. Jiak ba bo si zor, wrap your tummy or wear corsets/girdles/tummy binders. Think of yourself quite literally like a cocoon, after all the wraps, you will become a beautiful butterfly. Hahaā¦sounds cheesy but seriously, do it.
4) Find a motivation for yourself to be disciplined. I continued to buy pretty clothes in my pre-pregnancy size during the 9 months. You si mei si during confinement, I will take them out and see whether I can fit into them anot. Cannot, then repeat steps 2 and 3.
5) Treat every pregnancy as if it is going to be your last, (OK this time it better be for me!) so that you wonāt think that you donāt need to lose the weight since you will be putting on again after a while for your next pregnancy. Marie France? No need la, if I can do it without paying that amount of money, you can do too!
6) Breastfeeding can only help that much. After a while, the postpartum weight loss will become stagnant and the rest is really up to you. It is not a time to go on diet or exercise vigorously during confinement but you should monitor your input and output. Since most of the time, you should be sleeping or resting at home, you wonāt really use much energy hence donāt eat too much but just enough, smaller meals more times a day if need to.
All in all, they say it takes 9 months for your body to change during pregnancy hence it will take the same amount of time to regain your pre-pregnancy body. I say you can do it faster if you are really disciplined. However having said that, everyoneās body is different. Donāt stress yourself too much, get enough rest and eating healthy is good for you. Jiak bou is a must. Give yourself a realistic timeline to gain your pre-pregnancy body back. Remember there are no ugly women only lazy ones. Jia you!
You know how some companies just reply out of courtesy and doesn’t do follow-up?
I’m surprised when Orchard Hotel’s Senior Director of Catering and Events contacted me via this blog! It’s awesome when companies take the trouble to contact people who complained gave feedback. Ok I’m not sure if it works the same way if the feedback was given “secretly” via their feedback form since I never really trusted the “trusty” feedback forms. But it’s good to know that they take my feedback seriously and bother to contact me to provide me updates on my feedback, even though I’m not any big-shot blogger who has high hit-count on this blog. They could have just cast the feedback aside.
So I’ve been informed that they have held a meeting to discuss about putting new action plans in place, hoping to improve on the challenges faced by the operations team. Yes I’m appalled by that. Though we cannot expect a total change in service level overnight, every small step taken is a step towards better service. Kudos to the team for that!
If I ever have to attend another wedding dinner at Orchard Hotel again, I am looking forward to seeing better service. Manpower crunch in the industry is a norm now, but I’m pretty sure there are workarounds for that. š
Oh yes, I have to clarify that the complain post wasn’t targeted at any specific person. ęč°åƹäŗäøåƹäŗŗ. I am not unhappy about any particular staff, but unhappy with the overall experience I had. You know some companies will penalize their staff based on feedback (or maybe I have watched too much drama). I have stressed that to the Senior Director, and have been assured that it won’t happen. After-all, bad service is not the 1 person’s fault, but the company’s fault for not providing adequate training right?
At the end of the day, they are answerable to the wedding couple who paid for their service and not me.
It might have been due to the (previous) job hazard, that I takeĀ service provided by the F&B / Tourism industry seriously – think Singapore Experience Award.
The last time I was at Orchard Hotel was 11 years ago, thus I had no past experience to compare against. But with the many events I’ve attended in the past years, this must be the most unpleasant one I encountered.
Was at Orchard Hotel last night to attend a wedding dinner. Never did I expect it to be such a bad experience.
Chipped plate
First was this chipped decorative plate I noticed the moment I was seated. While I agree that it is not possible to notice all of such chips if it’s one of its kind, this is not the only chipped plate at the table I was seated at. At least 2 other plates suffered the same fate, one of which had a bigger chip. 30% of the plates were chipped, how difficult is it not to notice them?
My table was seated before the door was officially opened for all guests to be seated. The next thing I knew, was the decorative flowers on the tables being removed BEFORE the door was opened. I thought it was weird, because decoratives are there to beautify / bring up the atmosphere when the guests arrive right? In all the dinners that I’ve attended, such decoratives were removed only when there were at least 40% of the guests seated at the table or when the banquet is about to start. But to be removed prior to the arrival of guests is just.. weird.
When guests arrived, the staff should start serving drinks right? No that didn’t happen. So we waited a while, thinking they are busy (which I think they were since they kept running around). Finally ordered our drinks after we’re seated for a good 10mins. And the drinks took another 5mins to arrive. We had a kid at the table, so we requested for kids’ cutlery and a glass of warm water for the kid. 5 minutes. 10 minutes. Didn’t come. So we tried again with another waiter. 5 mins it still didn’t come. What’s wrong huh? It came only after we requested with a 3rd waiter. And FYI, the door still hasn’t opened at this point of time.
It’s normal behavior for guests to take a glimpse at the menu right? This was what the next table saw.
Dinner Menu
But.. my friends’ names aren’t Elvis & Wendy! I almost thought I went to the wrong banquet. These belonged to the couple next door! How bad can it get? I can make do with the above boo-boos, but this is a big no-no. How can such mistakes be made?
So the dinner started. Service till the 4th/5th dish was pretty much ok – I’ve lowered my expectations from those boo-boos. Plates were changed after every dish (well almost). Then the next hiccup had to occur. All the changed plates were still wet – which was ok, might be fresh out from the dish washer. But the plate wasn’t clean! If I were a demanding customer, I’d have flared by now.
Dessert was sago with mango puree. The waiter was distributing into the individual bowls, while some of us talked about desserts in HK – like how SG’s cannot be compared at all. Suddenly I heard the ladle knocked onto the big bowl and the waiter went off. Maybe he was done scooping butĀ this was what we saw.
Look at the state of the bowls and the table.
Look at the state of the bowls and the table. The individual bowls weren’t even half filled. Big bowl was still full. Table was.. unsightly. What? What happened?
The dessert wasn’t fantastic by the way.
If the banquet manager saw this post, I can expect the following response from them:
– not enough staff as there was another wedding banquet next door
– service staff are new
– not easy to get part-timers
To be in this industry, service is important. I’m pretty sure the hotel did not receive this banquet request only the day before. It is the hotel’s responsibility to ensure that service is of a certain quality – especially when Orchard Hotel is managed by the Millenium Hotels Group. Where’s the standard? I see none at all.
Pretty sad with this experience, and I know for sure I will not be back again. Nor will I recommend this to anyone who is planning to hold a wedding.
With the recent forest-burning happening on our neighbour’s land, Singapore is now tainted with a haze so bad it kept breaking the PSI record within the week.
While we grumble (yes I’m one of them too..) that the government has not done anything to solve this “crisis” (or whatever that is termed by the civilians), and while I do not agree with what has been said / done, I think we must still give credit when it is due.
The stocks for the N95 mask ran out the moment the PSI level shot up to 400 few days ago. Some stock arrived today at the various pharmacies, and at last update, Cold Storage at Great World City has it too!
The haze cleared a little today, going as low as PSI 73. Despite that, the PM2.5 level is still high.
PM2.5 should be what we should be more concerned about. The PSI level tells you how hazy it is (though it might not be accurate at the point of your reading as it is a 3hr average of several readings) or simply put – how bad the smell of the air is. PM2.5 is the level of micro-particles (of which includes harmful ones) that exist in the (bad) air that we breathe in.
If you are unable to get your hands on a N95 mask (which is the best mask in the market that has the best filter), that doesn’t give you an excuse not to wear a mask ya? Putting on a surgical mask works just as well, with it being able to filter out 80% of the particles compared to the 95% provided by the N95 mask. In short, put your mask on!
In the meanwhile, do keep yourselves hydrated. Keep eye drops & facial spray easily available and use them whenever you feel irritation in the eyes / skin!
Let’s all be ninjas till the haze gets cleared permanently. š
2 weeks into the new job now. Having worked in the private sector all these while, it’s a steep learning curve for the many protocols that I do not understand have to learn.
I’m not a headstrong person. If you explain the rationale why things are being done this way, I can easily understand and get on with the flow easily. But there are certain things that I have my own stand – some of which I have shared with close friends and they couldn’t understand either. I will give in eventually – that I know for sure. For that is the only way I can get things done. Just trying my luck on how long I can endure with this one protocol.
Nevertheless, it had been a good 2 weeks. Minusing the sleeping early and waking up early – and that’s a 10pm-6am timing, I think I am handling it pretty well so far. Thankfully all tuition classes were on hold these 2 weeks, as the students were having their school exams. I’m sure the 10-6 timing will soon be considered a luxury once classes resume next week.
Somehow I do think (for now at least!) I am born to be an educator. I feel happy when one of the students, from the relief classes I taught at the tuition centre, could recognize me when I popped by this afternoon. š I love it when I am around students. I love it more when I was told that their grades actually improved. <3
Which made me drop the decision to stop all tuition. My students gave me strength to carry on. No I’m not kidding, they really do! Especially those who are willing to learn and keep asking questions about topics that they do not understand. I’m glad I made that slight difference to them š
This post started off with the intention of updates on work, but I got distracted when I touched on the topic of tuition. Oops..
My new workdesk is an aspiring North Pole. So cold I had to wrap myself up like a ba4-zhang3 (dumpling).
Day 1 at work, the table was in a clean state.At week 2, this is what it became:
Those A3 papers you see, were what I used to block the aircon duct above the desk. And that white divider to block the aircon coming from the duct in the centre of the room.
I have a plan to take a snapshot of the desk weekly, until 30 shots have been taken. And create a mini timelapse video to see how it evolves.. XD
As a general reminder to myself, I can handle the coldness at this aircon setting:
